True Confessions
by plague2005
Summary: How did Josh and Donna resolve their issues and started to work together in Season 7? What would have happened if they were not interrupted by Lou? This is the conversation that was missing in the episode "The Al Smith Dinner".


**Summary:** How did Josh and Donna resolve their issues and started to work together in Season 7? What would have happened if they were not interrupted by Lou? This is the conversation that was missing in the episode "The Al Smith Dinner". _Italic_ sentences are thoughts.

**A/N:** I wrote this story because when I watched Season 7, they skipped Josh & Donna resolving their issues to working together. It felt rushed. Hope this story makes justice to that. I wanted to add some humor into the story but I couldn't come up with any. If someone has suggestions, please share. Also, reviews are appreciated.

I also updated the chapter again. For some reason, Dr. Freeride words were cut off in the chapter.

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><p>"I don't know what the problem is between you two, but she's great on television and I don't care if she worked for Francisco Franco in the primary, right now it's all hands on deck. So work it out." Lou handed over the folder to Josh and left the room closing the door behind her.<p>

Josh stared at Donna standing in front of him. "What kind of on-the-record experience do you have?"

"Is this a job interview?" Surprised by the question, Donna asked.

Josh shrugs his shoulder. "I'm campaign manager, I hire the staff. It generally involves an interview." "On-the-record experience?" He repeated the question again.

"Six hours ago, nationally televised press conference, Santos-McGarry campaign." She answered professionally.

"References if we want to pursue this?" Josh asked her trying to keep things civil and professional.

"Josh Lyman, campaign manager, try the main switchboard." Donna replied.

That reply made him lose his professional attitude a bit. "Did he tell you campaigns require loyalty; you don't go working for the other guy?" he questioned, indirectly voicing his feelings about her actions.

"Who happened to be the Party's front-runner." She replied back hoping she can keep things professionally and not start a shouting match with Josh.

With that, Josh lost the pretense of professionalism. "You knew I wasn't supporting him; me, your mentor in professional politics." His voice started to rise when he got to the issue that was bothering him. _Why couldn't she see how wrong he was? Why did she even join his campaign in the first place? Why did she stayed with the campaign knowing she would be against me?_

"The guy who taught me to answer the phone, who kept me in grunt-level servitude because I knew he liked his hamburgers burnt like hockey pucks?" She responded back harshly losing her pretense as well. She knew there was no getting around this subject.

"You ditched me when I gave you a career." He said unable to hide his feelings of hurt.

"As a short-order cook, I'm still waiting for the spatula to..." Donna carried on arguing but before she could finish, Josh interrupted her.

"You know very well that I didn't treat you like that." He yelled.

"You didn't give me any responsibilities either. I was doing the same grunt work over and over for more than six years. I was ready for more but you never seemed to give me anything else." She yelled back.

"I gave you all I could for your position. You were my assistant and I shared as much responsibility as I could for my position." He replied in a calmer voice but that still echoed his hurt from her leaving.

"All I was doing was answering your calls and acting as your servant. I was tired of being that." Donna said voicing her feelings.

"You know how often I involved you in everything I did. How many times have you seen Carol discuss her opinions with C.J. or Ginger discuss with Toby about something she had questions of?" He asked her looking straight in her eyes.

Donna couldn't answer because she knew he was speaking the truth.

"Everytime you had an opinion or question on something, you always discussed it with me and I always explained it to you. I wouldn't have been doing that if I was treating you like an assistant who answers my calls and gets me my food." He continued.

"I wanted to do something more in my career." Donna answered when he finished.

_I can't tell him the truth. I can't tell him that I couldn't keep on working for him and not let my feelings slip out. It's been real hard to control my feelings for him after he came to Germany for me. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to move on from being overwhelmed by these feelings. And the only way I thought it can, would be to find a job away from him. But it didn't. I ended up fighting against him yet wanting to be with him. _

"And you went to Bingo Bob for that? Of all the choices you had, that was the one you chose?" he questioned her.

"He was the front runner for the Democratic party Josh. He was going to be nominated and I wanted to be involved in that." She answered hoping that would justify her actions.

"You knew very well how I felt about him. You knew he was not the right choice. Still you decided to develop your career with him." He shook his head in disbelief that she would do such a thing.

"He was going to be nominated. Will was confident that once he got elected, he would be a better president. I thought maybe that might be true." Donna knew it sounded lame now but that was what she thought when she took the job.

"He would have never changed. Why do you think I refused the offer from Will to run the campaign when he offered it to me? I went through that once with Hoynes trying to change him and I didn't want to do that again." He said and walked away to the window looking outside with his back turned to her. She sat on the bed looking at him staring outside.

For a moment, the room was silent with neither having anything to say to one another.

"I always thought that no matter what happened you will always be there for me. Never in a million years would I have guessed that you would leave me for the sake of your career." He spoke breaking the silence without turning back.

"I thought you would have found an assistant and moved on." She said in a low voice.

"Moved on?" his voice rose with the question and he turned to look at her. She avoided his eye contact and looked down to the floor.

"How was I supposed to move on after having you there every day for more than seven years?" He asked in his raised voice.

_Is that how she thinks of me? Is that what she believes she means to me? Doesn't she understand how important she is to me? I always need her in my life. I thought she understood how much she meant to me. Guess I was wrong in that._

She didn't answer. She kept staring at the floor avoiding looking at him. It was easier to not see him and feel the hurt that she can sense from his voice.

"When Leo told me to go and find the next Jed Bartlet, I hesitated because I didn't want to abandon you and others. When you left, that was the final straw for me to come to the realization that everyone looks out for themselves first. That was when I decided to go in search of the next candidate who will not make a mockery out of all the hard work we had done in the past seven years." His voice had calmed down after realizing she wasn't replying. He was explaining to her his feelings for reasons that he couldn't comprehend. He just knew that he had to let it out.

Seeing how she wasn't willing to talk, he continued while walking towards her.

"You can't imagine how lonely it was during the nomination campaign to have everyone you cared about standing in your way. I had a candidate I didn't know that well, staff that doesn't know me, trying to make decisions that may not work, and had no support from C.J. or Toby. Then I had you campaigning against me." He chuckled sadly and sat next to her in the bed.

"I'm sorry." Donna said in a barely audible voice but Josh heard her. She was silently crying but she refused to look up at him and let him know of that.

"Even if I had left the Whitehouse to campaign for Matt, I would have gotten you a job as the spokesperson or something in the Whitehouse. But while I was there, I wanted you to be with me. Maybe that was selfish of me. Maybe I should have pushed you to take C.J.'s position when she became the Chief of Staff. I just didn't know how to let go of you and I'm sorry for that." He apologized.

She turned her head to look at him. _Josh never apologizes. But he seemed sincere in his apology_. When he saw her looking at him with watery eyes, he gave her a small smile which made her smile as well. He put his hand on her back and rubbed it gently trying to comfort her. And it did comfort her and helped her get her emotions in control. They sat there silently for a few minutes enjoying the comfort they always felt in the presence of one another.

"I do have a question though." Josh said breaking the silence. She looked at him with the questioning expression waiting for him to continue.

"If I recruit you into the campaign, you are going to be once again my deputy doing the grunt work. You are going to be answering phone calls and making appointments and going through poll data additional to being a spokesperson. The same work you said you didn't want to do. So why do you want to do it?" he asked her.

She looked away breaking the eye contact not answering right away. He stopped rubbing her back and got up off the bed giving her some space. He stood near the table looking at her.

_Should I tell him? Can I tell him? What would happen if I tell him how I felt about him? Would he feel the same way? Or would he kick me out?_

"I need to know Donna because I don't want you to start resenting me once again for making you do things that made you leave in the first place. You contributed a lot to Bob's campaign and I'm sure he would have offered you a position in his staff at the Whitehouse. So why come here?" He explained his reason for asking the question when he realized she wasn't answering immediately.

"I don't resent you." She said when Josh finished explaining. When he looked at her confused, she looked at his face and repeated. "I don't resent you Josh. I never did."

"Sounded like you did what with me using you for grunt work." He echoed back what she told him before. _And that hurts more than you can imagine_.

"No I don't. That was the problem Josh. You were comfortable with me working for you and I was comfortable being there when you needed me. But… someone pointed out to me that I should not be stuck in the same job for the same guy." She elaborated. Donna didn't want Josh to know about the conversation she and C.J. had.

"Why not?" he asked confused.

"Because it would be a never ending cycle. I wanted to see if there was something more I could do. Something that would change my career the way you did seven years ago." She explained.

_Something that would let me move on without being overwhelmed by my feelings for you._

"So what changed now? Why come back to work for me again?" He went back to the question that remained unanswered.

"I missed you." She looked away not willing to make eye contact and said too softly for him to hear. When she turned back and saw the same confused look, she repeated it again. "I missed you. I missed working for you. I missed the way you explained things to me. I missed our conversations and most of all, I missed our friendship."

Her voice had risen while she spoke and near the end, she was almost yelling at him. He had a surprised look mixed with something else that was unidentifiable to both of them.

He didn't know what to say to her after that. Both just stared at one another with Donna feeling embarrassed for yelling like that and Josh with a somewhat relieved look as if her response was what he wanted to hear.

After staring at one another for what felt like eternal, he said "I missed you too."

When she looked at him quizzically, he continued. "What I told you that day was true. I really missed you. Everytime I had to explain to the staff what I wanted when you usually know it before I asked, I missed you. I missed when I sit around looking to talk to someone and there was no one around. Atleast no one I trusted enough to talk to like I did with you. Hell, I even missed when I ate fries and realize you're not there stealing it from me." He chuckled and she smiled remembering the moments from the past.

"But I have to say when I saw you in TV talking, I felt proud. Don't know why. Like you said, Will was a good teacher but I was proud to see you out there speaking confidently in front of the press and handling it well. It was disturbing because you were speaking against my campaign. But I still felt proud of watching you stand there." He confessed with a smile.

"It wasn't Will." Donna confessed. _Time for me to confess if he is willing to_. When he looked at her, she smiled and continued.

"It wasn't Will who taught me everything I know. It was you. I didn't know much about politics when I joined the Bartlet campaign. From the campaign till Whitehouse, you taught me so much. I found my confidence from what I learned from you. From observing you handle senators and congressmen, from talking to you about issues that mattered and from understanding you and your ways. That was what prepared me for my job in their campaign. How else do you think I got promoted from drafting policies to spokesperson so quickly?"

_He doesn't know how much he has changed my life._

"I always knew the potential in you Donna. I always did. Don't think I under-estimated you. I'm sorry I couldn't give you the opportunities to expose it." He said feeling guilty for not giving her the chances she deserved. _But giving her opportunities meant letting go of her and that was something I wasn't willing to do at that time. And that cost her to leave me in the end_.

"It's true I had more opportunities when I worked for Russell campaign. But I was able to capture those opportunities because of what I learned from you. So I don't regret it." She said with conviction.

"And now you want to show your potential in our campaign?" He asked and she nodded with a smile.

"Ok. But don't forget Donnatella. You asked for it. So be prepared for me to be the way I am." He warned her with a smile.

"I've been prepared for many years. I'm impervious to your behaviour." She replied back with a smile of her own.

"Ok. Let's go tell Lou before she comes in here yelling at me. She's very bossy." Josh said and they both smiled knowing how true it was.

They started walking towards the door and when he put his hand on the handle, he paused to turn back towards her. She looked at him wondering what made him pause.

"This may sound totally ridiculous but it's been on my head since we last spoke and I have to ask." He said without opening the door.

Donna looked at him wondering what was going through his head.

"Was I like Dr. Freeride?" he asked her.

"What?" _That question came out of nowhere._

"Was I like Dr. Freeride? Did I hold you back using you for my own gain? I really have to know." Josh asked embarrassed for the question. _I really have to know. Did she think of me the same way as she thought of him? Was I that bad or worse? I made fun of him and looked down at the way he treated her but am I better than him?_

"No. Why would you even think that?" she asked him confused at where he was coming from. Seeing that he was not convinced by her response, she smiled and shook her head.

"Joshua. Josh. Josh." She kept saying his name while shaking her head. _Josh and his unnecessary feel of guilt is never going to change_.

He looked at her remembering the last time she said it in a similar manner and coincidently that conversation involved the same as well.

_When she says my name that way, I can't explain how I feel but it sure is nice and comforting._

"Listen to me. You're not like him. Not even close. You were not using me. You gave me a career. You taught me everything I need to know in this career. More importantly, you gave me the confidence and allowed me to find myself that I had lost when I was with Michael." Seeing Josh's confused look, she clarified. "Michael is Dr. Freeride's real name."

"So please stop feeling guilty about the past. You are nothing like him and I don't regret the seven years I spent with you. I'm glad I will get the chance to spend more. If I didn't, I wouldn't have come to you."

Seeing Josh's doubt clearing up, Donna couldn't resist but reach out and touch his cheek with her palm. "You're really very sweet you know?" _I really want to kiss him but now is not the time to ruin what we just mended._

He gave her a bright smile at that and she couldn't help but smile back at him. They both looked at one another and there was a silent non-verbal communication between them.

He turned back and opened the door holding it open for her and she walked out with him following behind her.

"All resolved?" Lou asked when she saw them both coming out of the room.

"Yes. Donna will be working for the campaign and she has agreed to be my deputy." Josh informed everyone.

"It's about time. Hope you know how to handle this grumpy" Lou told Donna who smiled back at her. Josh exclaimed "Hey!" in the background which they both ignored.


End file.
